There are many entrepreneurs who start businesses, but it’s only a few of those start-ups succeeds and become successful businesses. Successful entrepreneurs have a set of traits that makes them successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs also have a set of traits that makes them unsuccessful.
The difference in traits sets the difference between entrepreneurs! The traits of successful entrepreneurs keep them on top of their business and industry and the traits of unsuccessful entrepreneurs kick them out of business.
Successful Entrepreneurs
Successful entrepreneurs come in sizes. Basically, we can classify successful entrepreneurs into two depending on their achievements. The products of their entrepreneurial ventures determine their level of success.
- Entrepreneurs who create a job
- Entrepreneurs who creates an asset
Entrepreneurs who create a job: Entrepreneurs who create a job simply become successful by employing themselves and building a practice. They are their business and without them, there is no business. They are very successful professionals and extremely good at what they do. Examples of such self-employed professionals are electricians, plumbers, auto mechanics, freelancers etc.
Entrepreneurs who create an asset: There is another group of entrepreneurs who focus their time, energy and resources on creating business assets. These entrepreneurs develop successful business systems and employ people to run those systems so that their business can run without them. They create business assets that generate cash flow with or without their presence –which can even be sold or send public if they want to.
Unsuccessful Entrepreneurs
These are basically entrepreneurs who have started a business –maybe created a job—the business fails and then they fold their hands. Instead of learning from their mistakes and coming back strong and stronger, they quite! These are the unsuccessful entrepreneurs.
Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs
As I said earlier, the traits of successful entrepreneurs are what set them apart from unsuccessful entrepreneurs. Everybody can start a business, but not everybody can make a business successful. It is the traits of a successful entrepreneur that actually makes him or her to build a successful business that stands the test of time.
Now, when we talk about business here—we want to refer to a business asset as oppose to a job created by the first class of successful entrepreneur. We want to look at the five traits of successful entrepreneurs who take an idea and turn it into a business asset that generates a steady flow of cash.
So what are the traits of successful entrepreneurs?
- Vision
- Courage
- Creativity
- Ability to Withstand Pressure
- Ability to Delay Gratification
Vision
Every successful entrepreneur who builds a business asset starts with a vision—not money. They build the business in alignment with their vision. They have a clear picture of how the business should be and look like when it is fully built and they work each and every day to build the business to align with the template they have in their vision.
In order words, they develop a business plan that serves as a template to guide the development of the business. The business plan becomes a bridge to help them achieve their vision for the business. As they work day-to-day to make their business plan real, the vision of the entrepreneur for the business is accomplished.
You can also read this: The 5 Simple Steps to Write a Business Plan for Your Business
IBM founder, Thomas Watson said, “From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day, we attempted to model the company after the template. At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we are and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start at the following day we set out to make for the difference.”
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Courage
Courage is ability to take action in spite of fear, doubt and failure—this is a trait of successful entrepreneurs. They make calculated risks and take bold business decision in spite of all the odds. And at the end they succeed.
Successful entrepreneurs understand that they have to fail their way to success. They understand that if they want to succeed very fast, they have to be willing to also fail very fast. So they commit themselves to taking action and working on their business plan—the template of their vision on a daily basis.
They fail, learn from their failures and become more successful. Thomas Watson added, “If you want to be more successful, double your rate of failure. Success lies at the far end of failure.” They take courage! They take risks! At the end they take charge of their industry and become successful in business!
Creativity
Creativity is the ability to think outside the box. It is the ability to take an ordinary idea and turn it into a business asset. Successful entrepreneurs are thinkers and creative people. They create business out of nothing. They take trash and turn it into cash!
They analyze their mistakes, withdraw the gem of wisdom from them and act on those gems through courage and become successful. The main reason some entrepreneurs fail is because they don’t probably see entrepreneurship as a profession and a long term journey.
A surgical doctor will not retire or resign just because a patient died while operating on him. The surgical doctor will learn from his failures and be successful in the next operation. That takes creativity. It requires the ability to solve problems!
Successful entrepreneurs are creative and turn their creative ideas into business assets that generate more and more cash flows with or without their presence in the business.
Ability to Withstand Pressure
To be entrepreneur, you must be willing and ready to withstand pressure. The greater the success, the greater the pressure! Pressure usually comes from dealing with people. Dealing with people is probably the hardest part of running a business.
And in dealing with people, there will be friction—there will be issues, disappointments, mistrust, challenges, betrayals, disloyalties and many more. You must be ready to withstand and bear these pressures. Pressures with investors, bankers, partners, financial advisors, consultants, employees, customers and government officials!
You must be able to withstand these pressures. Actually, most entrepreneurs fail because of their inability to withstand pressure. You must be able to withstand these pressures to build a successful business. And you see, the pressure is a daily thing—you will have to withstand them daily to be in business!
Ability to Delay Gratification
Successful entrepreneurs understand that a business is a living organism. They know that just as living things have to be fed in or order to grow and become stronger, they also have to feed their business to grow and become stronger.
They feed their business regularly by reinvesting the profits into the business to make it grow stronger and stronger. They feed the business regularly by employing more people to run the systems of the business. They feed the business regularly by doing all that it takes to make the business successful!
Because they take good care of the business, the business also rewards them by taking good care of their life. As a result, successful entrepreneurs become wealthy and rich beyond their wildest imagination. They amass great wealth than they can consume because they exercise patience and delay their gratification of the business funds!
Hope you have understood and learnt the traits of successful entrepreneurs. If you are planning on starting your business, examine your traits and see where you fall. If you are already in business, examine your traits and strengthen them. Look for the traits of successful entrepreneurs around you and model them.You can also share your comments below.
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Kindly fill the form below and download our business plan template to develop a plan for your business.